4:58 pm | 27 July 2004 | 1: burritos. 2: bitchy e-mails.

Hot warm ploppy

So I'm broke-er than a spun-sugar pi�ata, but yesterday I give in to cravings for gross delicious repulsive wondrous unhealthy convenient rich fast food and hit up the Taco Bell. While I am in line, my eyes drift away from the Kid's Meal toys that are so idiotic, and up to the menu, where I behold a new feature: a 99� Value Menu, at the Bell, of all places, where everything is already pretty much a dollar if you don't eat the meats. And oh my stars, what do I see on said Value Menu but a 99� Half-Pound Bean Burrito. Sacre bleu! I LOVE bean burritos! If this is as delicious as the plastic burrito in the picture promises, coyly spilling forth its beans and onions and saucy-things with cornucopiac abandon, then I will not only continue to RUN for the border, but I shall make a home there and there shall I live out the rest of my days. Plus: need I mention that the regular-sized bean burrito is 89�, so it's, like, not even a choice.

So I go home with my hot warm ploppy plastic sack (because though I am a scary Unabomberish lone-wolf type, I am SURELY not the type to be dining solo in a TB). At first (after being doused into submission by three or eight packets of hot sauce), the burrito is everything you want from a Taco Bell burrito. Dude: it is totally cheap. It is hot, and someone else prepared it for you*. It is full of beans, several slim onion cubes, something cheese-reminiscent, and what might be euphemistically termed a mol� rojo. But the inherent design flaw of the 99� Half-Pound Bean Burrito makes itself ominously, dreadfully apparent about midway through the feastage. For lo, although the tortilla is bigger than usual, it is no sturdier, and the half-pound of beans really is just and only that: moreover, Taco Bell beans, soupy in consistency. I am sad to say that without the leavening intervention of lettuce or somesuch, the 99� Half-Pound Bean Burrito becomes a diaper of beans in your hand, forcing you to take up spoon and bowl in your fight, or to do as I do and scoop beans with chips from the crucible of pintos that the tortilla, defeated, flaccid, has become. VERDICT: No good for a date, boss. clm.

*In college, pretty much living at Denny's in a haze of Benson & Hedges and ulcer-crafted coffee, this was named the Grilled Cheese principle: The idea that, although one could make oneself a grilled cheese sandwich for approximately 45� per, one would be willing to pay TEN TIMES THAT retail for the luxury of having someone else cook it for you and then clear away the greasy brown plate.

Memorandum black-belt

You know why I like being good at my job? It is for one simple reason, folks. No, it's not that I was a super-brainiac in highschool who just got used to being totally #1 at everything (even though I was. All my homies at da Science Olympiad say concoidal!). It isn't for the fabulous money I make, either, or the respect I command. It sure as FUCK isn't because I looooove being the person that everyone goes to when they can't figure their own shit out ("Claudia, how can I send people to this webpage?" [Seething with hatred] "E-mail them the link." "Oh, okay. Thanks!"). I actually hate the crap out of that, since it means that my sense of non-complishment is only quadrupled, seeing as how I can't finish a single damn project without getting 15 more dumped into my ample lap. But back to the rhetorical question. You know why I like being good at my job? It's because it makes me right. If you are gonna try to step to ME, like this one associate who likes to point out mistakes, you better step hard and fast. In fact, you better goose-step, because it'll just help you become accustomed to the sensation of being stupid and wrong. I am a black-belt when it comes to polite, assholic memos. Let's take a look, shall we?

Hi [Asshead],

With regards to [the error you are supposedly "pointing out"]: There are at least a dozen [casual yet bitchy number-tossing underlines how little I care about this] instances where two contracts were supplied�an original, and then a supplementary contract which supersedes the restrictions imposed by the original. The data you think is in error was rejected pursuant to the first contract's restrictions, and it appears that the second contract was not considered at all. Can you tell me how, in the future, to avoid this sort of situation [this part of the e-mail is a distraction tactic where I seem helpful, making you wonder if I am really being bitchy]? The contracts were numbered P07-01 and P07-01B, and are (at least to my eye) [this lets you know that you are stupid, while instilling further doubt: am I bitching, or apologizing?] clearly connected to each other [see? "clearly connected." You are DUMB]. Please advise for future clarity (or let me know to whom I should speak regarding these matters) [the coup de gr�ce: it says both "I don't want to burden you with my pesky little problems!" and "You are way too dangerously retarded to be trusted with anything of even minor importance."]. Thank you! [Die now!]

Kind regards [spread thickly with lies],

Claudia [she who will one day destroy you]